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line weights and your rod...

It's is more or less accepted that if you are fishing a (for an example) a DT6 line on your rod, you can go with a WF 7 and get more or less the same performance with the rod.

What else can you do? Can you go with...say... a DT 8 and get "almost" the same performance, without damaging your rod? And if you can use a DT8, does that mean a WF 9 offers the same action from your rod?

I figure this "use the next weight line " business has to stop somewhere, but where? Or is there no hard and fast rule, it depends on the rod?

Re: line weights and your rod...

You can up- or down-line your rod under certain circumstances and get decent performance, and beyond that, you can rupture the envelope farther, hopefully without rupturing your rod.

Rods don't know from AFTMA numbers. They are comfortable with a certain range of weight flexing them, however that's arrived at. Suppose you want to fish a small stream or the near margins of a bass pond. You could use a line two, perhaps even three sizes higher than the rod's rating, because you have only, say 15-20 feet extended beyond the rod tip. As long as you don't hook Ol' Methuselah, your rod's probably safe.

And you can cast a lighter double taper to rediculous distances. I've done it: a DT4F - I mean all of it - on a nine-weight steelhead rod. With most of that line in the air, the rod was carrying a heck of a lot more grainage then the AFTMA 4-weight standard of 100 grains. I thought I'd discovered nuclear fusion, until I realized that the rod was heavier than I wanted for spring-creek fishing, and the tip was much too strong for 6X tippets.